ServiceNow’s origin story reads like many different profitable tech startups.

They didn’t initially want thought management. They wanted nice merchandise and gross sales.

ServiceNow had that — a cloud-based workflow platform used to automate varied IT processes. However ServiceNow lacked a robust model id, says Richard Murphy, who joined the corporate because the editor-in-chief and director in 2017. ServiceNow had 5,500 workers and posted $1.9 billion in income that 12 months.

“We weren’t significantly well-known outdoors of IT prospects, and our core buyer was a director of IT sitting deep within the IT operate,” Richard says.

ServiceNow’s presence within the market has modified quickly since Richard joined the corporate. It expanded its services and products and adopted a complete content material advertising technique to help that rising and various viewers. Right now, ServiceNow offers an AI-powered platform that automates processes throughout almost each enterprise operate, from IT to human sources, customer support, finance, procurement, and past. In 2023, ServiceNow boasted greater than 22,000 workers and $8.5 billion in income, and it’s on the way in which to $16 billion within the not-too-distant future, Richard says.

Its content material technique labored effectively for the corporate and led to advertising business accolades. ServiceNow and its company associate Message Lab took high honors on the 2023 Content material Advertising and marketing Awards for Finest Content material Advertising and marketing Program, Company/Consumer Content material Advertising and marketing Partnership, B2B Publication, and Finest Digital Publication (distribution). It additionally was a finalist in eight different classes.

Richard was named 2023 B2B Content material Marketer of the Yr.

Utilizing content material as a progress technique

How did a enterprise journalist and social scientist develop a content material advertising technique that supported and contributed to the speedy enlargement of ServiceNow?

Richard turned to thought management. However he didn’t produce these run-of-the-mill white papers, e-books, and webinars. As a substitute, he adopted a Harvard Enterprise Overview mentality and launched Workflow, a digital publication that covers rising traits in enterprise tech and enterprise technique. Workflow has been a cornerstone of ServiceNow’s technique to place itself as a strategic innovation associate to companies and governments worldwide. The content material model now contains Workflow Quarterly, {a magazine} that covers a singular theme every quarter, from the digital expertise to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) to danger administration.

Workflow Quarterly presents a premium editorial expertise, packaging proprietary analysis and deeply reported tales in a compelling format. The result’s {a magazine} that entices readers and educates them about digital transformation. 

When ServiceNow’s thought management program began, some inside ServiceNow puzzled why the model ought to spend money on constructing thought management. Richard wanted to persuade them it could transfer the underside line.

“No one ever obtained in my face and stated, ‘Richard, your work has no worth. Why are you right here?’” he says. “Everyone was keen to provide me an opportunity, however I wouldn’t say that my job safety was tremendous superior for the primary couple of years.”

It helped that ServiceNow was rising its product strains and increasing its goal audiences. Till 2017, the viewers was made up of IT administrators in search of to decrease their prices. Nevertheless, the enlargement in product strains and industries meant the client profile advanced into folks with C-level titles. Eighty % of the Fortune 500 are ServiceNow prospects, together with authorities companies world wide.

These decision-makers are senior leaders who could or could not have technical backgrounds. “They’re a lot much less within the ins and outs of tech — the speeds and feeds of tech — than they’re within the strategic worth of tech,” Richard explains.

Senior leaders wish to know the solutions to those questions in the event that they spend money on ServiceNow’s know-how for his or her IT operations, HR providers, customer support administration, procurement, finance, and so on.:

• How a lot cash will I save?
• How will it enhance labor productiveness?
• What’s it going to do for worker and buyer satisfaction scores?

“All these questions relate to the influence of know-how, and that’s what we cowl in Workflow,” Richard says.

Rising right into a model

Workflow shortly demonstrated non-salesy, product-agnostic thought management wasn’t simply good for growing model consciousness. It additionally constructed belief within the model, which finally translated into advertising and gross sales leads.

That’s when the C-suite at ServiceNow acknowledged thought management was good for enterprise.  

In six years, Workflow’s viewers has grown to 1.5 million distinctive guests and a pair of million whole web page views – up by 1 million views up to now 12 months alone. On common, Workflow guests spend almost six minutes on the positioning, up 71% 12 months over 12 months. Senior enterprise leaders — the core buyer — dominate the viewers. The metrics present Workflow readers usually tend to take fascinating actions, similar to visiting the corporate’s web site (ServiceNow.com), giving up their e-mail handle to obtain a white paper, and studying concerning the firm, in comparison with ServiceNow.com guests who haven’t beforehand consumed Workflow content material. (Learn extra about how ServiceNow tracks content material efficiency on this 2022 article.)

“We now have seen that the extra of our content material they devour, the extra possible they’re to purchase,” Richard says. “As a result of on the finish of the day, regardless that we’re not pushing the merchandise immediately, every little thing we discuss on the thought management stage does want to offer mental air cowl for particular merchandise.”

Rising to satisfy the subsequent problem

A bit of over a 12 months in the past, ServiceNow launched RiseUp, a program to create one million expert professionals who can function ServiceNow options inside a company and thrive on this digitally reworked financial system by 2024.

It grew to become an enormous alternative for thought management. “Instantly, you may analyze the entire world of abilities growth and reskilling in a world the place AI and generative AI are quickly altering how organizations function, how they go to market,” Richard says.

ServiceNow partnered with Pearson AI, which makes use of machine-learning algorithms to crawl census information, job boards, and different financial information units worldwide. They used AI to foretell how AI goes to alter the mixture of abilities wanted for people and corporations to succeed within the world financial system.

The analysis advanced into an immersive content material expertise that includes the findings, explains their influence, and relates the tales by means of specialists utilizing video, graphics, textual content, and extra. “We have been capable of place ServiceNow as an organization that not solely offered AI options however was additionally keenly conscious of the influence of AI on folks and organizations,” Richard says.

ServiceNow advertising and gross sales groups can now use this thought management bundle to deal with the labor disruption dialog and discuss concerning the options the corporate offers to reduce the influence.

Getting the work performed

When Richard launched ServiceNow’s thought management program in 2017,  he was a crew of 1 with a small funds to rent an company — that’s when Message Lab got here on board. Right now, the interior crew totals 15 and sits within the world model crew. Richard co-leads the initiative with writer Sheila Dowd. The pair operates in a conventional editor-publisher partnership. He focuses on the content material, and she or he takes care of viewers growth, paid and natural search, and so on.

With a sturdy editorial crew, Richard has broadened his focus from creating authentic thought management content material to shifting the viewers alongside a content material journey. “It’s all about serving to construct this holistic story that goes from model all the way in which to demand,” he says.

Now he spends his days speaking to colleagues throughout communications, together with product, business, and associate advertising, in addition to exterior companions, similar to Accenture, Deloitte, and PWC, who implement ServiceNow options in organizations worldwide.

The crew’s company roster now contains Message Lab for model journalism content material, Barretto for inventive design, and Thought Lab for analysis assist.

“It’s discovering the fitting steadiness between your exterior companions and your inner crew, then it’s about bringing the fitting abilities. All of it collectively is the place you get the success,” Richard says.

Specializing in what’s subsequent

Richard grew up within the Center East and Southeast Asia, the place his father labored as a U.S. diplomat. He studied literature at Harvard and later earned a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford primarily based on fieldwork in Pakistan. He began his journalism profession as a contract reporter in Afghanistan and went on to cowl enterprise, tech, and worldwide affairs for The New York Occasions, The Wall Road Journal, and Fortune, amongst others.

Richard served because the editor-in-chief of Fortune Small Enterprise journal. When that publication closed in 2009, he shifted his path barely. Working as an editorial technique marketing consultant, he discovered a few of his most fascinating initiatives have been creating thought management content material for administration consulting corporations like McKinsey and Bain.

When Hewlett Packard Enterprise spun out from HP in 2015, Richard joined the brand new enterprise tech firm as editor-in-chief on the worldwide model crew.  He helped outline HPE’s editorial voice and launched a publication known as Enterprise.nxt to teach enterprise leaders about IT technique and the way forward for computing.  

That journalistic, thought management, and branding expertise served him effectively when he moved to ServiceNow in 2017. Over the six years, the sources have grown, enabling Richard and the crew to develop and deepen the protection, publish extra authentic reporting, and conduct proprietary analysis.

“In the end, that’s what issues to me. I’m 100% a journalist and an editor by way of simply my background and the way I feel. And it’s all the time about advancing the story. For those who’re not advancing the story, what’s the purpose? You’re not a thought chief; you’re a follower.”

MORE EXAMPLES FROM 2023 CONTENT MARKETING AWARD FINALISTS

Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute